Pages

April 4, 2011

Mad Scientist Alert! "If we could experiment with the atmosphere and literally play God, it's very tempting to a scientist,"

The Mad Scientist are out in the open again. Not that they ever went away, it is just that they don't usually get much attention in the mainstream media. Here from the Tennessean we have an AP story with pictures of some of the actual participants of this mad scientist moment leisurely discussing their plans to alter the Earth.

Does anyone else see the irony of scientist declaring that mankind has altered the climate due to their insatiable lust for, uh, progress, now wanting to alter the climate to compensate for man altering the climate? As if the progress of man in order achieve a better and longer life is somehow unnatural which needs to be counter acted by using technologies that would not have been possible without the progress that caused the supposed problem to begin with.

I really love the sub head to this article too a sort of subliminal double meaning. Not that warming intensifies, but rather that warming intensifies talks, let us hope it stays there. because as we know everyone wants to save the planet. This of course includes our friends at the Novim Group, we'll see if there is any connection here.

Well here is the article

Scientists ponder risks of manipulating climate

Warming intensifies talk on saving planet

Written by
Charles J. Hanley
ASSOCIATED PRESS

CHICHELEY, England — To the quiet green solitude of an English country estate they retreated, to think the unthinkable.

Scientists of earth, sea and sky; scholars of law, politics and philosophy in three intense days were cloistered behind Chicheley Hall's old brick walls: Four dozen thinkers pondered the planet's fate as it grows warmer, weighed the idea of reflecting the sun to cool the atmosphere and debated the question of who would make the decision to interfere with nature to try to save the planet.

Sorryyyyyy, I just could not let this go, the idea of thinkers pondering the unthinkable cloistered behind old brick walls. Maybe I've just read too many Robert Ludlum novels in my time but this sends chills up my spine.

The unknown risks of "geoengineering," in this case, tweaking Earth's climate by dimming the skies, left many uneasy.

"If we could experiment with the atmosphere and literally play God, it's very tempting to a scientist," said Kenyan earth scientist Richard Odingo, "but I worry."

Arrayed against that worry is the worry that global warming may abruptly upend the world we know, by melting much of Greenland into the sea, by shifting India's life-giving monsoon, by killing off marine life.

This sounds very much like the hyperbole that our hero Dr Richard Muller spoke out against in his famous video "Greenland melting into the sea" ? If the previous paragraphs did not chill you how about this for a Mad Scientist motto:

"If we could experiment with the atmosphere and literally play God, it's very tempting to a scientist,"

Well aren't they special!

If climate engineering research isn't done now, climatologists say, the world will face grim choices in an emergency. "If we don't understand the implications, and we reach a crisis point and deploy geoengineering with only a modicum of information, we really will be playing Russian roulette," said Steven Hamburg, a U.S. Environmental Defense Fund scientist.

Oh boy, you can see it coming can't you! The God like scientist need to do research! They need some money to investigate what needs to be done to save the world from you sinful pathetic little human beings. You have gone and wrecked the Earth and now they will need to investigate ways to save us from our wasteful, sinful nature. Oh how the thinkers ponder cloistered behind their brick walls, protected from the disease of human kind.

The question's urgency has grown as nations have failed, in years of talks, to agree on a binding long-term deal to rein in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions blamed for global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N.-sponsored science network, foresees temperatures rising as much as 6.4 degrees Celsius (11.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, swelling the seas and disrupting the climate patterns that nurtured human civilization.

About the only thing swelling in regards to climate, is the swelling egos of the scientific community,

Science committees of the British Parliament and the U.S. Congress urged their governments last year to look at immediately undertaking climate engineering research, to have a "Plan B" ready, as the British panel put it, in case the diplomatic logjam persists.

Britain's national science academy, the Royal Society, subsequently organized the Chicheley Hall conference with Hamburg's EDF and the association of developing-world science academies. From six continents, they invited a blue-ribbon cross section of atmospheric physicists, oceanographers, geochemists, environmentalists, international lawyers, psychologists, policy experts and others to discuss how the world should oversee such unprecedented research.

Yes Plan B ! Wow, this sounds vaguely familiar. I mean what could go wrong with all this "thinker" firepower cloistered together to save the world. I am reassured, how about you?

An Associated Press reporter was invited to sit in on their discussions, generally off the record, as they met in large and small groups in plush wood-paneled rooms, in conference halls, or outdoors among the manicured trees and formal gardens of this 300-year-old Royal Society property 40 miles northwest of London, a secluded spot where Britain's Special Operations Executive trained for secret missions in World War II.

If it weren't so scary it would be hilarious, well I guess it can be both. Really equating the mission of "God like" scientist to Special Operations from World War II. I love the idea that the discussion were primarily off the record, sort of like a secret society or something.

Provoking and parrying one another over questions never before raised in human history, the conferees were sensitive to how the outside world might react.

"There's the 'slippery slope' view that as soon as you start to do this research, you say it's OK to think about things you shouldn't be thinking about," said Steve Rayner, co-director of Oxford University geoengineering program.

Many geoengineering techniques they have thought about look either impractical or ineffective.

Oh come on Steve, what a ridiculous statement, you are the co-director of Oxford University geo-engineering program, you are being paid to think about this nonsense!

One idea has promise

Painting rooftops white to reflect the sun's heat is a feeble gesture. Blanketing deserts with a reflective material is logistically challenging and a likely environmental threat. Launching giant mirrors into space orbit is too expensive.

It really is not necessary either, if Northern Hemisphere winters continue on their current trend, roofs will be painted white....naturally.

On the other hand, fertilizing the ocean with iron to grow CO2-eating plankton has shown some workability, and Massachusetts' prestigious Woods Hole research center is planning the biggest such experiment. Marine clouds are another route. Scientists at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado are designing a test of brightening ocean clouds with sea-salt particles to reflect the sun.

Those techniques are necessarily limited in scale, however, and unable to alter planetwide warming. Only one idea has emerged with that potential.

Oh I wait with baited breath for the pronouncement from on high, or rather from behind the brick wall, but I bet I know what it is!

"The leading contender is stratospheric aerosol particles," said climatologist John Shepherd of Britain's Southampton University.

The particles would be sun-reflecting sulfates spewed into the lower stratosphere from aircraft, balloons or other devices, much like the sulfur dioxide emitted by the eruption of the Philippines' Mount Pinatubo in 1991, estimated to have cooled the world by 0.5 degrees C (0.9 degrees F) for a year or so.

I knew it, the man made volcano solution. Let's spew aerosols into the atmosphere and hope that we don't have another Pinatubo, or worse, eruption sending the world into a man made ice age. God these guys are brilliant! Hey I have an idea, why not just remove government regulations on sulfur dioxide emissions from factories. kind of like China, and save the money on all those "aircraft, balloons and other devices". By the way when our God like scientist start talking about "other devices" it is time to buy a gun and plant a garden.

Engineers from the University of Bristol, England, plan to test the feasibility of feeding sulfates into the atmosphere via a mileslong hose attached to a tethered balloon.

Shepherd and others stressed that any sun-blocking "SRM" technique, for solar radiation management, would have to be accompanied by sharp reductions in carbon dioxide emissions on the ground and some form of carbon dioxide removal, preferably via a chemical-mechanical process not yet perfected, to sck the gas out of the air and neutralize it.

Otherwise, they point out, the stratospheric sulfate layer would have to be built up indefinitely, to counter the growing greenhouse effect of accumulating carbon dioxide.

You know we are in serious trouble when they start handing out acronyms "SRM". Solar radiation management, now that sounds like a natural solution to a man made problem doesn't it. I do like the idea that they are now addressing the idea of sucking the sulfur dioxide out of the atmosphere, just in case. And all this is supposed to be more economical than carbon sequestration or cleansing?

I doubt any of this has anything to do with our climate at all. It is about cloistered thinkers who have no concept of the real world having been self-deluded behind their walls into believing that they have a God like control over mankind and the Earth.

Be afraid, very afraid, these people have shown that they are not a joke, though they are a joke, they now wield real power in the world we mortals live in.

UPDATE:

Is that Jason J Blackstock of Novim Group and CIGI fame waving his hand in the picture at top of post? I'm sure he would be there I wonder if the list of participants to this meeting is secret.